Crysis 2 Using Adrenaline Crysis 2 benchmark two runs. The first set of runs set to ultra-settings, 1080p, 4x Anti-Aliasing, DX11, Laplace Edge Detection Edge AA, on the Times Square map, with hi res textures turned on. The second benchmark set to Xtreme at 1080p, no AA, DX9, Edge Blur, Hi-Res Textures turned off on the Times Square Map.

Battlefield 3 Using Fraps with the game set to Ultra settings with 4x MSAA Antialiasing Deferred, 16X Anisotropic Filter, at 1920x1080.

Synthetic Benchmarks For video cards our synthetic benchmarks are limited to 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark Vantage 2011. 3DMark Vantage is run with PPU turned off with results from both the performance and high settings. In 3DMark Vantage 2011 we run both performance and extreme benchmarks

FurMark We use Furmark to push the video card to the limit and test its cooling performance. Keep in mind that FurMark pushes cards well beyond what they would ever do in game. Our tests are done using the built in 1080p benchmark.

I dont know where the truth lies on this but I expected a reaction from Nvidia to the 7950 launch, most probably an announcement of the upcoming GPU's with a launch schedule, or simply a price cut.

The launch of 7950 is clearly a bigger threat to gtx580 than that of 7970. And this due to the fact it counters it at a lower price point with the added bonuses of 3gb ram and o/c Headroom.

The silence of Nvidia is deafening.

A pesimist would say that the company appears to be in a state of shock and denial.

Avoiding announcements for the products (while competition runs rampant) is clearly a demonstration of the product's immaturity.

Avoiding price cuts can be explained as a desperate effort to deny defeat in the performance sector, since there will be no swift replacement of the current products with new better performing ones. Thus the organization assumes, a "continue as usual stance", in order not to alert the stock markets, which would definitely be alerted if the current product line was devaluated with no obvious release schedule for a new "soon to come" GPU line.

Moreover if the info about Gtx 580 not being produced is true, a price cut could lead to supply problems and make the new product's absence even more visible.

With AMD’s new HD 7970’s rocking the boat slightly with both price and performance it’s about time we started to see the slow trickle of GPU’s that will fill in the rest of the HD 7000 series video cards. First on the list is the HD 7950, a card that a lot of people have been waiting for because of the high price of the HD 7970. There is no doubt that it’s not going to outperform the HD 7970, but how will this new card compare to the GTX 580? Today I’m not taking a look at a reference card, we have skipped directly to the XFX Double Dissipation Black Edition Overclocked version, similar in design to what we saw with their R7970.